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Monday, 18 July 2016

Getting Away With It

So politically well-connected is Dato’ Lee Chee Kiang that it seems that no one has so far dared to name him in Malaysia.

However, we can reveal that he is squarely cited in the charge sheets against others arrested over the fatal shooting of the land rights hero Bill Kayong, where he is named for having abetted the murder.

Lee is believed to have fled Sarawak for Australia at about the time Kayong was shot dead in his car at a traffic light in Miri, yet there has been no public notification so far that a Red Notice Alert has been issued for his arrest and we ask if the Australian police are aware that a wanted Malaysian suspected killer is at large and believed to be in their territory?

Indeed, the criminal nexus between land grabbing timber/plantation companies and top politicians, who hold undue influence over the forces of the law, has been perfectly illustrated in the case of Tung Huat Plantation, where Lee Chee Kiang is a Director and key shareholder.

For years native landowners have been locked in legal battles against the company, supported by land rights lawyer Abun Sui and campaigner Bill Kayong, who are both linked to the opposition PKR party – Kayong was a candidate at the state election.

Lee Chee Kiang, on the other hand, is very closely linked to BN’s SUPP party, whose local election battles have been heavily financed by Najib personally (as million ringgit cheques signed by him at the general election bear testimony).

Lee’s father and fellow director, Lee Sie Tong, is none other than the present Temenggong of Miri, known to have close ties to the SUPP.

On June 1st that post was extended in a ceremony officiated by an SUPP Vice President, the Tourism Minister Lee Kim Shin, who openly congratulated Temenggong Lee for having “been instrumental in getting the community to support the Barisan Nasional (BN) government“.

Bill Kayong himself and other campaigners had received unrelenting verbal threats from Lee himself and gangsters allegedly paid by him for months, often receiving up to 20 phone calls a day, according to people close to the case.